December 2, 2012

My inbox used to be stuffed with unwanted emails, all promising me prosperity in return for a small amount of cash upfront, from people with names like Ngowa Mbube, Prince Goodluck Obasanjo, and Barack Obama.

But then my spam filters started to delete these automatically, so, I completely missed out on the Great Presidential Email Offensive of 2012. From Bloomberg Newson the Science behind it:

The appeals were the product of rigorous experimentation by a large team of analysts. “We did extensive A-B testing not just on the subject lines and the amount of money we would ask people for,” says Amelia Showalter, director of digital analytics, “but on the messages themselves and even the formatting.”

The campaign would test multiple drafts and subject lines—often as many as 18 variations—before picking a winner to blast out to tens of millions of subscribers.

It quickly became clear that a casual tone was usually most effective. “The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your in-box from other people,” Fallsgraff says. “ ‘Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration.” Another blockbuster in June simply read, “I will be outspent.” According to testing data shared with Bloomberg Businessweek, that outperformed 17 other variants and raised more than $2.6 million.

Writers, analysts, and managers routinely bet on which lines would perform best and worst. “We were so bad at predicting what would win that it only reinforced the need to constantly keep testing,” says Showalter. “Every time something really ugly won, it would shock me: giant-size fonts for links, plain-text links vs. pretty ‘Donate’ buttons. Eventually we got to thinking, ‘How could we make things even less attractive?’ That’s how we arrived at the ugly yellow highlighting on the sections we wanted to draw people’s eye to.”

Another unexpected hit: profanity. Dropping in mild curse words such as “Hell yeah, I like Obamacare” got big clicks. But these triumphs were fleeting. There was no such thing as the perfect e-mail; every breakthrough had a shelf life. “Eventually the novelty wore off, and we had to go back and retest,” says Showalter.

Fortunately for Obama and all political campaigns that will follow, the tests did yield one major counterintuitive insight: Most people have a nearly limitless capacity for e-mail and won’t unsubscribe no matter how many they’re sent. “At the end, we had 18 or 20 writers going at this stuff for as many hours a day as they could stay awake,” says Fallsgraff. “The data didn’t show any negative consequences to sending more.”

The Ministry of ObamaSavior does not lack for truly devoted Winston Smiths to throw outworn Newspeak down the Memory Hole and to replace those discarded bon mots with fresh smears of dogmash_t.

I grew long ago weary of living in what is a global mass media Skinner box; but it appears that billions of my fellows are blissfully unaware of their entrapment therein - entrapment which they may revoke by mere exercise of wit and sense.

There's really nothing new here. Spammers have known for years that the best way to get through the newer filters is to make your message look like the kinds of messages ordinary people send to each other. Ordinary people don't send messages with long, informative subject lines and half a dozen attractive link buttons. They send short subjects like 'hey there' (or leave it blank) and they use stuff like big gaudy fonts. The sloppiness of text messaging combined with the ugliness offered by a full WYSIWYG editor.

Some don't unsubscribe because their mailboxes are unlimited and their filters do a pretty good job anyway. But others don't unsubscribe because they know that spammers collect those addresses and sometimes sell them for a premium, because an address that has unsubscribed is an address that reaches a living, reading person. That makes it worth extra. Unless you're sure that you're dealing with an honest mailer, unsubscribing is just asking for more spam.

I still get emails from John Kerry--I'm sentimental about the guy so I've never unsubscribed, and I enjoy the thought somehow of Sen. (Sec.?) Kerry gently hectoring me like some Irish Daniel Webster through the web.

His emails, when I look at them, seem pretty sedately Romney-esque too. Stuff sometimes about charity marathons or something. Like what you'd expect from a Ron Reagan-type Democrat black sheep son of GHW Bush.

The more interesting question is, "What happens when the average IQ of your target audience exceeds 85?"

Is there a way, from the exit-poll data, to crudely estimate the average IQ for each of the candidate's supporters? I'd guess it's very close to 100 for each side; or in any case, I doubt there's a considerable IQ gap between Romney voters and Obama voters.

But, yeah, the people responding to these e-mails have to be mostly sub-100, right? Then again, where do they get the money to donate?

Finally, is it really possible that Showalter and co. don't get the joke? Because I know they have relatively high-IQs, which in turn makes me wonder, what good is IQ when it can be so easily trumped by willful ignorance?

I got buttloads of Romney mail. He sent me three pictures. Twelve by eight, I think. The RNC even sent me a dollar bill! You know, so I'd feel bad they were so broke and send them money. I still voted for those retards, but DANG.

I don't know about 'spam juggernaut', but if you would care to peruse the excellent 'Roger's Profanisaurus' - an excellent Xmas gift, by the way, you will find an interesting definition for the term 'spam javelin'.

Where do they get the money to donate? Just wait for a new program to allow welfare recipients to donate up to $2000 to the democratic candidate of their choice. They should have just as much right as people with money to support their politicians.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

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